It used to be that you needed darkroom skills to make your photos look great. Then when things switched to digital, you at least needed to be able to make your way around Photoshop.

Now Instagram handles it all, and it looks great for editorial purposes. There’s still going to be a challenge getting the great shots, and an iPhone can’t handle a lot of circumstances. But the skills needed to make beautiful shots that are worthy of the cover of a newspaper continue to diminish rapidly.

“Skills” seems like the wrong word — in addition to an app that people usually use to take pictures of sunsets and fancy cocktails they’ve ordered, Laham is an accomplished sports portraitist who had access to the New York Yankees’ spring-training facilities. If his Yankees photos summon any larger narrative for photography, it may be how they’ve gotten out.